Young engineering student Boyan Slat made a splash this year with his plan to clean the world's oceans of plastic waste. But his idea has its critics.

AS WINTER DARK CLOSES OVER northern Europe, 19-year-old engineering student Boyan Slat's mind will be occupied by his recent time on board a 22-metre-long yacht called Sea Dragon crossing from the pink coral beaches of Bermuda to the Virgin Islands, and preparing for a return sail from St Maarten across to the Azores.

Through these wide Sargasso Sea latitudes he paid close attention to an instrument resembling a cross between a tall steel ladder and a draftsman's T-square. Fine mesh nets hung from it. The whole thing dipped by boom from the spraying Sea Dragon, trawling through the rolling ocean.

Despite days with three-metre swells, the team accomplished four successful two-hour trawls with the device. Its aim is to scoop up plastic detritus, gunk, and degraded bits of plastic bottles — the kind of garbage, whether we realise it or not, that we throw into the water every day. Slat and his team are using their instrument to survey the field and try to get an idea of how much of this rubbish is out there and in which surface depth levels it can be found.

Strange seaweed

Researchers know now that giant ocean current vortices called gyres are the destination for carelessly-discarded water bottles and plastic bags. These objects drift down creeks and rivers, some of them bobbing into the open ocean, where they eventually break down into a vast, slowly rotating stew. Sometimes this plastic-laced soup is referred to as a 'garbage patch'. There are five major gyres. It is the one in the north Atlantic through which Slat, his companions and a small crew headed by skipper Eric Loss recently skimmed across under skies fair and foul.

Slat made a splash last year with a TED talk from his engineering-savvy hometown of Delft. His idea is to clean up the great floating garbage fields with an array of giant manta-like boom arms skimming the sea surface. Under this concept the booms draw in the gunk for filtering. The array anchors to the ocean floor 4,000 metres below. Currents draw through the device. The gyres clean themselves.

Boyan Slat's idea is pulled by another vortex of forces maybe peculiar to our information age. His video is at 1.1 million views. There's Slat's youthful energy and sex appeal, genuine enthusiasm and intelligent charm. It is charged by the speed and reach of social media like YouTube, polished platforms like TED and our fascination with engineered ideas. The teen — incredibly organised, it seems — built a nonprofit with a staff of 50 in less than a year. Slat postponed his studies in aerospace engineering and went to sea even as his team sorted through Facebook calls for interns in computational fluid dynamic modelling.

Slat's idea is at odds with the sheer scale of the ocean and the complex problem we are causing. It is buffeted by the harsh, inexorable critique that reality imposes on any high concept trying to make its way out into the world from CAD programs and slick animated screens. Architects know this struggle. Not everyone thinks the array concept is a good one or thoroughly conceived. Some say it could even be a well-intended but harmful sideshow.

An organisation sponsored by the scientific journal Nature says the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a debris field in the North Pacific Gyre discovered by Long Beach mariner Charles Moore and billed as twice the size of New South Wales, consists of about 3.5 million tonnes of junk in slow doldrum orbit.

This junk is 80 per cent plastic. It is everything from bottle caps to toothbrushes to buckets. Some of that garbage is intact — but the word 'patch' evokes a soggy garbage mat or 'trashi-pelago'. It's not. Most of the plastic in the gyres are very small particles worn down by light and weather and water into bits and pellets and even microscopic flakes. It's more gruel than patch.

Youth and action

To this, Boyan Slat took to the stage last year and said: "Why don't we just clean it up?"

Patch-finder Charles Moore figures it would take a massive and near endless effort to clean the gyres. Slat does not. "I believe the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can completely clean itself in five years," he said in his TED talk.

Slat developed his scheme of booms and platforms, officially called the Ocean Cleanup Array, after being alternately depressed and inspired during holiday diving where he saw more floating plastic than fish. He and a friend did a few experiments (one with plankton in a centrifuge to see what they can handle in being separated from identically-sized plastic particles). Their school project developed into the TED talk.

Slat says currents do the work. "Vast amounts of funds, manpower and emissions will be saved. The platforms are self-supported, receiving their energy from the sun, currents and waves," he said. There are numbers: some 55 shipping containers full of plastic a day could be extracted. Recycling the garbage would be profitable.

Arcing around the world, Slat's idea drew US$90,000 in crowdfunding and ever more fascination.

But soon he dialled back his presentation. Slat placed big red signs on his website stressing that the team is interested in a "feasibility study" and that the ocean array is a concept, not a solution in production.

He dimmed the media spotlight shining on him, including refusing repeated requests from the ABC for interview. The new message from Slat's team is that their feasibility report aims to remove all assumptions from the concept, ranging from engineering and oceanography, recycling, finance and maritime law. "This scientific study is planned to be ready for publication around the beginning of 2014, and we therefore believe it's not the right moment for further attention," he said in a statement.

Do it on land

Their basic points are these: the average ocean depth is 4,000 metres so anchoring something to the sea bed is difficult; there are only a few small things in the world with a seabed anchor four kilometres deep. The plastic gruel is photodegraded and brittle. In his presentation Slat throws out a US$500 million figure as potential recycling income from the gyres. But Stiv Wilson, policy and campaign director of the ocean conservation nonprofit group 5Gyres, says this is misleading. "If you talk to any recycler they are going to say the plastic harvested from the ocean is going to be worthless," he says.

Aussie beaches

From Cape Tribulation down the eastern seaboard and major Australian cities, around the continental coast, sometimes on seaplane, Denise Hardesty and her hardy team of researchers are cataloging the garbage strewn along Australia's coastline.Hardesty, a researcher at CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research outpost in Hobart, Tasmania, is running a 'national marine debris project', surveying Australia's coast about every 100 km. "You get to some of these remote places where access is really difficult," she says. "And you do just find rubbish everywhere. Little bits of plastic and fishing nets and crates and boxes and toothbrushes and lightbulbs and refrigerators." The team is compiling a big database of rubbish types. School groups and kids and community groups wanting to collect data and contribute, can. For more, check hereA beach cleanup is also something you can do, Stiv Wilson of 5Gyres says. "Doing beach cleanup is doing gyre cleanup. And it's a lot more cost-effective."Hardesty, whose garbage survey extends into Australian coastal waters, says there's a link between the plastic she sees and that in the gyres: "Surface plastic concentration ranges from over 4,000 pieces per square kilometre up to 9,000 pieces in Australian waters," she says. Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales, has built a page which calculates the patterns of plastic detritus drift: place your accidental spill of rubber duckies at a point off the coast, and see where they will wind up over time at adrift.org.au

The plastic soup is thin and the ocean is vast — far more so than fits comfortably in the public imagination.

Wilson recalls his first time seeing the garbage patch. "Imagine the night sky, no moon. No light. The stars represent the plastic on the water. Space is the ocean surface. That's what it looks like," he says. "Intermittently there are big objects, fishing gear or a Coke bottle or a hard hat."

Everything, he says, is superdispersed. He's very skeptical that we can just skim it out of the water. "It's like trying to pull the smog out of Los Angeles by holding a vacuum cleaner in the air."

Wilson is at pains not to get the knives out for Slat's motives, however. "I think he's trying to do something to solve a problem," he says. "But there's a kind of hubris in the design world that we can create any problem and design our way out of it rather than finding ways of not using the crap in the first place."

Other ocean researchers agree. "There's really only one solution to this. That's to stop plastics from getting into the ocean," says Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer the University of South Wales.

Moore says the farther away a mess drifts from its origin, the harder it is to clean up. He gives an example. "We're not going to have the Boy Scouts go up into the upper atmosphere with squirt guns and get the chlorofluorocarbons out so we can close up the ozone hole. You stop CFCs with the spray can at the hardware store. Ban them."

"When I was in Amsterdam in the late 90s, a firm from Rotterdam had an engineering solution that looked like a giant sea star whose tentacles were elevated by hang gliders," Moore says. The starfish was also going to be paid for by the recycling proceeds. "They think it's like sitting in a landfill. That's just not the way it is."

Wilson says these distractions take attention — and money — away from designers and researchers with more viable and useful projects. "There are thousands of activists around the world working on bans of single-use products," he says. "If you eliminate plastic bags from New York? That would be 7 billion plastic bags annually: five to six per cent of US consumption."

Design efforts, Wilson says, are better aimed elsewhere like trying to improve packaging. "Nobody really gets any attention for this. You could eliminate 90 per cent of waste by the type of packaging you do." One effort Wilson specifically mentions is Ecovative, a New York firm working on a replacement for polystyrene packaging made from mushroom roots. "You can throw it out in your backyard and the next time it rains it will go away, and it's inert."

Like ocean weather, the debate over the gyres is cyclical. Ed Carpenter, a marine biologist at the State University of San Francisco who first came across plastics in the Sargasso Sea in 1972 (pdf), recalls being called a kook for writing about it at all. "I got a lot of flak from more senior scientists. I was a young assistant. A lot of people thought I was a bit wacko and it didn't help me with my career," he says. "They thought, 'so what if there is plastic out there?' And they had elitist ideas of what a marine scientist should be doing."

As he settles into feasibility research, one thing is clear for Slat: he now has a voice. His ideas will get a hearing. The community of researchers involved with the gyres is a small one. Most of them have sailed on the Sea Dragon, the same ship Boyan Slat sailed through the Sargasso. Eric Loss, Sea Dragon's skipper, mentions possible collaboration between Slat and 5Gyres in a blog post about Slat's recent Sargasso sail.

Slat is now a lightning rod for help and ideas from around the world. He is sitting on a contest jury soliciting design concepts for crucial pieces for the ocean array. Two executives at aeronautical engineering firm Dassault are also on the jury. With his popularity and social media currency, he has a chance to draw attention to a shameful state of affairs in the worlds oceans and put his solution into the crucible.

Melissa :

Shauna :

11 Apr 2015 5:59:09am

So what if it only does a small percentage of clean up. - anything better than zero has to be good . It gave me optimism and it is to be remembered that if it is only part of a solution doesnt make it wrong. Here is a young mind with the enthusiasm and energy to try something and that should be applauded and supported .

Andrew :

09 Jun 2015 10:03:55am

That's a pretty simplistic take on things, the "anything better than zero" perspective. Take a look at this http://bit.ly/1B28RH9 and you'll see that it's quite possible it's NOT better than zero, that it actually will cause more environmental harm than good.

Mark :

23 Jun 2014 8:31:33am

In many ways the idea of Slat is unrealistic. It will never clean up a large part of the plastic in the vortices. Most is microplastic and will never be extracted. And another large part of the plastic is deeper, not a sea level, or even sunk.

Anchoring at such great depths is not practical and bound to problems. Besides, there are entire metal containers and other large objects also regularly passing by in the gyres, that will damage the booms.

And a good point to start is to find out how profitable the recycling really is, and how much co2 and energy is costs to extract plastic in this way. Also didn't see the questions raised as what is done with biological by-catch that ends up in the array.

What is most harmful however, is that he gives the impression that his ego is more important than solving the problem, by making simplified statements without scientific backup, saying things like 80% of the plastic can be cleaned up within 5 years and throwing out a $500 million income.

It takes us further away from the real solutions; these attempts that focus on media spotlights do the ocean more harm than good.

Lisa G :

18 Jun 2014 9:58:49am

People are criticising this kid for making an effort. What is wrong with what he is doing? The solutions of clean up or stop the waste are not exclusive, they work together. It's not like he's using up his resources on the wrong thing. He is trying to use his knowledge to help on one part, if he wasn't that doesn't mean he could help with the other. Well done to him for doing something, and if his critics focused on helping him with the flaws he might have in his methods, maybe it'll just work. We all created this mess, we all have a right to try and fix it.

Adrian :

09 Feb 2015 7:46:35am

I agree that it's not productive to just dismiss his ideas out of hand. But my first thought while listening to his TED talk was Thr depth of water at the pacific gyre. Two miles down give or take and technically difficult to seabed anchor on it. His plan was intriguing though and the more engineers working on this problem the better.

Lauren Christians :

08 Jun 2014 10:57:41am

how disheartening that experts are willing to dismiss any efforts other than the one they think is superior. obviously all the plastic can't be cleaned up, but discounting the effort is counterproductive.

we must take a a balanced approach to solving all our social problems. include our addiction to consumption, and ambivalence toward our waste. we must attack the problem from every angle.

refuse a bag at the store. buy in bulk. bring your own cup.and clean up the plastic that is everywhere.

Sebsys :

07 Jun 2014 6:03:40pm

I think it's a really good idea. We need to encourage this kind of concept because we've polluted and polluting too. We need this project to succeed. I am therefore for large organizations take it in hand and realize in practice. After that, it can also invent a way to clean debris orbiting the Earth.

Peter Coldicott :

09 May 2014 1:33:30am

It seems to me that there are really 2 distinct problems here and that instead of fighting over which one to go after we should get on and go after both, it is absolutely clear that we need to address the problem at source and not add to the existing problem, we need alternative materials and better packaging for sure, Even if we entirely eliminate further pollution, the gyres with their plastic content are still there and causing immense environmental damage every day, we have to clean them up AS WELL AS solve the source problem. So, instead of bickering over which is more important, let people work on both and cooperate, we have to solve them both not one only.

Lola :

sanctious :

10 Jun 2014 2:20:21am

I agree, however I think things must be done in order.

Imagine your older brother is spraying you with a hose on full blast. Do you try to dry off with a towel at the same time you try to convince him to stop spraying you? Perhaps this isn't a fair analogy, I'll admit. We should make efforts to clean the ocean and prevent further waste. However preventing the problem from getting bigger is the more immediate cause for concern

Tiffany :

25 Jun 2014 3:39:00am

I understand your concern, but have you visited his website? If you look on the home page, you will see that he has listed three phases. Among them is prevention. While cleaning up the oceans, he is also working on putting his device in rivers and deltas to prevent more plastic from getting into the ocean. He is already trying to tackle both.

In the meantime, how will YOU stop people from polluting and littering?? Have you done anything to educate people to dispose of trash properly? Do they listen to you?

TucsonJim :

01 Jun 2015 3:50:57pm

I am personally sick and tired of the bad rap that doing nothing gets. For example, Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid" is famous for documenting (as others have been saying for decades) how relief efforts are the actual cause for much of the hunger and violence in Africa. It turns out that doing nothing is often far better than the best intentions without the science (social as well as engineering). Deming was famous for saying that without an understanding of the underlying science a person could not obtain say 30 years of experience but only 1 year 30 times over. Having a real education and degrees is sadly losing all respect in our post-modern world. I mean, who wants to be associated with the next multi-million dollar Solar Roadway scam? This is not the first well-intentioned cleanup plan that never materialized. There are many PhDs who have asked the same question as Sanctious has here, like Dr. Kim Martini. Would you likewise ask Kim what's she done to earn her the "right" to ask such a question? Do you know she's also said prevention would be a better start (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g00rzQvyxZ8#t=124)? Dr. Martini concluded last year "It is our opinion that information contained in this report has not proven that the Ocean Cleanup as currently described is feasible." Wouldn't the better question be what YOU are doing to stop people from polluting and how you have measured YOUR success in getting people to listen to you? Marine biologist Miriam Goldstein has suggested that young students like y'all would do better to "work together as marine debris professionals to channel their energies into more productive directions." Are you really going to also ask her what she's done? Manuel Maqueda, of Plastic Pollution Coalition, El Plastico Mata, and other organizations has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide. He likewise asks "What about stopping plastic pollution at the source? Wouldnâ€™t that be a better use of our ingenuity, time and money?" Would you dare ask Manuel what he has done to earn the right to ask this question? His ideas for real change can be found at plasticpollutioncoalition.org.

Annette Law :

11 Apr 2014 1:44:11pm

Great project ! even if it can only achieve a fraction of the cleanup involved. Perhaps a project for Greenpeace now that it has dealt with Japanese whaling. Universal public awareness of the problem may help lessen its effects.

Stephen Cody :

23 Feb 2014 11:22:41am

At least he's trying to do something. While most "senior" scientists just sit and endlessly talk and plan and study this kid is out there doing something.They say " all this is wrong" yet offer no alternative.I'd rather have more involved students like him than more useless "senior scientists" who sit on their rumps and point out other peoples flawed idea in lieu of doing anything to help.

Dave :

25 Dec 2013 2:12:25am

Drinking or eating from plastic isn't so good for you either.

BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic can transfer to the food or drink inside and then on to you. They can mess up your hormone production, sperm production etc. especially a concern for young kids development. Newborns drinking out plastic bottles get high doses of the stuff.

BPA has been banned in the European Union and Canada too.

I'm sure it won't take long before Australia bans it and not long after that before they find other hormone disrupters in plastic.

greenspider :

17 Dec 2013 3:59:47pm

Perhaps somebody should tap Clive Palmer on the shoulder and say "Instead of building a luxury ocean liner to cater for the fat cats of the world why not build a ship to vacuum up the rubbish in the ocean?" Be a much better use of money methinks.

Paul Sharp Two Hands Project :

17 Dec 2013 8:38:57am

I had the privilege of sailing on the Sea Dragon with Stiv Wilson, and recently completed a plastic pollution survey from Hobart to Sydney. Ocean cleanup is next to impossible. The key is for the designers and manufacturers of polluting plastic to take responsibility and take on litter free design. "Biodegradable" plastic is still poison in the environment. We need a global standard on reusable design, (based on the German bottling system) where all consumer goods come in reclaimable, reusable packaging to eliminate plastic pollution. Over 30% of Australian plaice pollution is beverage related, yet big bottlers even oppose a simple bottle refund. Instead big bottlers need to lead with solutions and litter free design.

Dicko :

16 Dec 2013 9:34:15pm

Big corporations have grown exponentially since plastics were invented. The very existence of these behemoths is detrimental to the planet because they internalise profits and externalise the costs - to the environment especially. The only way to cut down on plastics is to tax them hard so consumers may make conscious choices about the products they use. Government has been doing it with cigarettes - jumping from $1.50 to $24 a packet over 20 years has certainly cut down the numbers of smokers. Time to do the same with waste - especially non biodegradables. It isn't just rubbish in the water, it is death for thousands of birds and aquatic animals.

vill :

"He has his critics.."The academics should get off their fat behinds and get out there and help.I have no more time fro them, having been a University lecturer for the past 10 years. If you lot knew what goes on at our prestigious unis and how much money is poured down the drain you would cry.

Of course it needs to be dealt with at source, on land, in the shops, but it's not going to disappear in the sea in the meantime.

Good on him, for giving a damn, having a dream and trying.We need the old guard to go asap.

Wallace J Nichols :

16 Dec 2013 4:26:15pm

Well done, thank you for this. Ever since Ed Carpenter's research science has known that microplastic pollution in the ocean is a serious and growing problem. But we've been sequentially distracted by non-solutions that keep us in plastic-mode. Calling it a "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" that's "the size of Texas" created some PR problems too, as people assumed we could sail on out to it, tie off and begin shoveling plastic onto barges. A quick click over to Google Earth would show the "plastic island" myth to be false, but most journalists skipped the verifications step. Meanwhile, it's taken a longer time and energy to clear up the myths and quick fix schemes. Here's to the innovations that move us closer to zero waste and biomaterials. And the legions of volunteers cleaning up the plastic one piece at a time and learning the scale of the problem at hand.

EM Laidly :

16 Dec 2013 3:24:18pm

If ever the case for deposits on drink containers it is made with these figures here. The small inconvenience to avaricious behemoths such as Coca-Cola, ably abetted by the Australian Food and Grocery Council, would be well offset by the costs incurred by having to clean this muck up.Better still, impose a production cost on plastics and a deposit on aluminium.

steve :

Elizabeth Beaumont :

17 Dec 2013 10:20:24am

I have read 35kg of plastic production per year per person on this planet . Multiply 35kgs by 7 billion and it is obvious we are giving up the planet And it is fair to say "Houston we have a problem" I believe plastic production is squeezing our non renewable resources and directly contributing to climate change as well as the despicable problem it causes to wildlife. Seriously , the plankton and zoo plankton that are taking up residence in photo degraded plastics is what we will eat this Christmas Day. The facts are in , the debate is obvious , AVOID plastics as much as possible. Finally please don't walk past it . I see it as a poison and you wouldn't leave in the ground for an innocent creature to swallow later on would you??

Elizabeth Beaumont :

17 Dec 2013 10:28:17am

It is not big headed to pick up other's rubbish. It is an disgusting indictment of human being to leave their rubbish behind in the first place. Do you know how difficult it is to have to see it there in the first and at least take some responsibility for it . Do you pick up plastic?? Do you go into creeks and haul out some disgusting piece of plastic raincoat or wade in to get a plastic bottle??? Do you ?? Do not criticize the efforts of others, who display some environmental stewardship. Do you how much trouble so many have gone to clean up , even just a bit . Would you rather leave it for a bird to clean up???????

Gary Dean of Brisneyland :

17 Dec 2013 1:17:12pm

I agree with you and you with me. Read my comment again. I said we shouldn't want to be a hero about it. To answer your question, yes I do, both on my own and along with my community on those special clean-up days. But my community is not looking for fame, money, or a medal for not throwing our rubbish or keeping our Land tidy.

ghl :

26 Dec 2013 11:29:51am

ElizabethEvery other animal in the world craps where it stands, and moves on. Mankind is the only animal that cleans up it's messes."no less than the trees and the stars;we have a right to be here"Avoid vexatious thoughts.

lelsleyg :

11 Apr 2014 1:54:16pm

I so agree with you Elizabeth. We must become more aware of the affects we have on our world. After all, eventually our carelessness and not caring attitude towards others (human and otherwise) will kill our world and all in it.

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